Top Shopping Sites for Malaysian Women

Updated on January 9, 2011

Thanks to technology and business savvy individuals, Malaysian women can now complete their office reports, spruce up their homes for the Lunar New Year and still have time to find cute outfits for the festivities via the Internet.

In other words, gone are the days where women (and their poor boyfriends) would have to waste a whole weekend queuing outside dressing rooms and jostle each other at checkout counters just to get a few meagre outfits.

In our bid to locate the best shopping site for women on the Internet, we have inspected shopping portals frequented by Malaysians.

Lelong.com.my

Site One: Lelong.com.my

Malaysia’s version of ebay, Lelong.com.my comes with plenty of traffic and updates on new items to buy and sell from mobile phones to computers, cars to baby products and handbags.

Pros

Buyer Protection
The lousiest thing that can happen when you shop online is when you pay for something you don’t receive, right? Lelong protects the buyers with a maximum compensation of up to RM1,000 per transaction (minimum of RM100).

Cons

Where’s the Dress?
Under the Clothing category, we could find plenty of interesting subcategories like 15 listings on beaded bras straps and 878 listings of lingerie items. Funny enough, we couldn’t find a sub-category for dresses.

Clutter Mania
We understand that Lelong is a haven for everything including fashion, but when we finally did locate the dresses (which for some reason, is categorised under Tops & Blouses), we then had to deal with 64 pages of dresses, plenty of times coming across the same dress with different prices from different sellers.We think Lelong.com.my is too cluttered and messy!

The Verdict

There are plenty of fun items to buy and bid on Lelong, but we’re not sure if it’s where you would want to buy good quality clothing from. We tried a couple of orders from different sellers and the clothing quality is actually sub-standard, something which you can only expect to get from night markets (pasar malam). Cheap prices, but sub-standard quality!

Irenelim Fashion

Site Two: Irenelim.com

Irenelim.com is a fashion site that sells plenty of female items including a fashion line that caters to Muslim women. The site has also recently branched out into selling cookies and hampers for the festive season, the upcoming Chinese New Year.

Pros

Handpicked Quality
Each article of clothing is personally selected by Irene Lim, who makes sure that each piece meets her quality standards.

Plenty of Promotions
The first thing we noticed when we logged onto Irenelim.com/fashion is the big banner that displayed the "Buy Any 5, Get 1 Free" promotion. Another ongoing promotion is the storewide 10% discount on all items, including already discounted items. Bloggers can also get a dress for free under the "Free dresses and Free delivery" campaign to spread awareness of their online shopping site.

Real Malaysian Models
The thing about buying cheaper clothing online is that you’re always paranoid that there is something wrong with the item which you don’t realize until you wear the actual item and realize that it is destined to linger in the darkest corner of your wardrobe until the End of Time.

Irenelim.com counters this problem by using real-life Malaysian models to display every item in their virtual store. The models body statistics can also be found on the website just so buyers can compare sizes before they make their purchase.

Really Active Website
Irene Lim updates their clothing inventory on an almost daily basis. You can also easily contact the owner, Irene Lim via the website, email, phone and even through MSN Live Messenger.

Cons

Visa or Mastercard?
For the moment, Irenelim.com only accepts direct banking payment and Paypal. Cash on Delivery is also optional, provided buyers buy over RM100 worth of merchandise and stay around Klang Valley. Payments using Visa, Mastercard and other credit cards are only accepted through Paypal.com.

The Verdict

Buyers have virtually no disadvantages to buying from Irenelim Fashion - Malaysia Online Boutique as the site even has a return policy on faulty items.

BeautyMyth

Site Three: BeautyMyth.com.my

While other sites concentrate on bringing Asian fashion to Malaysian women, BeautyMyth aims to bring fashion from the Western countries to the Malaysian fashion scene.

Pros

Price Promise BeautyMyth pledges to honour the lowest price of the same item if buyers spot the same item at other locations. The catch is that the Price Promise is void if the same item is found at a lower price on other non-Malaysian sites, or auction or forum websites.

Flat Rate for Delivery
Regardless of how heavy your parcel is, the delivery rate is fixed at RM6.

Cons

Imitated European Fashion
BeautyMyth advertises fashion from H&M and Zara under the Europe fashion catalogue. Buyers beware! The items under that segment do not look authentic H&M or Zara items.

Not Malaysian ModelsPhotos shown on their website are supplied by their suppliers which got them from the manufacturers. My guess is that they are from China. Thus, the models are not Malaysian and I also believe the photos are heavily Photoshoped to look really beautiful. The actual items might not look as nice.

Too Many Categories
All we wanted to look for were dresses, but we had to look under New Arrivals, Europe Brand, Dresses, and a segment called Prettybabes which featured dresses and blouses. Fashion should be in abundance, but it should also be well categorized.

The Verdict

While the site has plenty of potential, it would be better to wait until the site is better managed before you make any purchases.

Our Recommendation

So if you’re looking to update your wardrobe through the Internet, your best bet would be to make your purchases via Irenelim.com. The site is hands down the most user-friendly and has the cutest clothing at pretty affordable prices. Happy online-shopping!

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